Portrait of Kandinsky (1906) – Woodcut by Gabrielle Münter
Wassily Kandinsky was one of the most influential artists practicing in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Perhaps more than any other painter, he is credited with the shift from representational to abstract art.
The first part of the century was tumultuous both artistically and politically. Much of Kandinsky’s most original and important work was completed in Munich between 1908 and 1914. At the time Munich was the centre of a thriving artistic community.
Cover for “Der Blaue Reiter” Almanac (1911)
Kandinsky left Munich where he had emigrated from Russia in 1896, to return to Moscow and escape the First World War. However Russia was soon embroiled in the revolution of 1917. At first he worked for the revolutionary government – despite having had most his wealth appropriated by the state. When the new Soviet government became hostile to avant-garde art – presumably they were unable to control its practitioners, Kandinsky returned to Germany in 1922.
He had secured a teaching position there at the new Weimar Bauhaus. By 1933 however, the newly-elected Nazis had taken power and closed the Bauhaus. Kandinsky’s art was labelled ‘degenerate’ and he once again had to flee – this time to Paris.
Kandinsky remained in Paris until his death from arterioschlerosis in 1944. He was 78 at the time – and continued to work until a few months before his death. During his lifetime he was enormously prolific, and has left us with a stunning legacy that chronicles the evolution from a late nineteenth-century artistic sensibility with its ties to an ‘objective’ world, into abstraction…
TALKING TO KANDINSKY – A One-Act Play
